Dealing with other criminal associations

[Ozymandias IV]

This idea is still in the workings of my mind, I just want to post it so I don't forget and so other people can put in their two cents.  How about if other criminal groups (or people) came after you.  Suppose you did something to anger, say the Mafia. What would happen?

[Ferusio]

Or techno-Mafia.

That idea doen't really exist in Uplink right now. Maybe it will be included in a mod or something.

I assume they would frame you for crimes, hack your bank account etc.

It would be cool to see a mod where there are organizations like "guilds" which you can join and do missions for. Maybe even rise to the head of one. And they have a sort of "respect" system where, say, you do a really hard-to-pull-off hack they respect you more. Or if you fail a hack they respect you less.

Maybe one day, but not right now.

[TheHackMan]

Good Idea!

[Corruptation]

I don't really think that other people framing you for crimes or hacking your bank account is a good idea. Imagine yourself in the middle of a storyline mission and suddenly you got caught. That means you always have a chance to get caught without any reasons just because your computer did it.

The organization idea isn't too bad but it it nearly the same as working for Uplink Corporation. I don't know what's the point of having a high respect. I wouldn't like having hundreds of mail from your organization asking how did you do that incredible hack or something like that. It might be a little better to join other corporations to help them by destroying a rival company instead of joining a individual group with a intension to destroy anything they can think off. You won't be able to hack then.

[TheDuke]

Quote: from Corruptation on 7:02 pm on Oct. 31, 2003[br]I don't really think that other people framing you for crimes or hacking your bank account is a good idea. Imagine yourself in the middle of a storyline mission and suddenly you got caught. That means you always have a chance to get caught without any reasons just because your computer did it.

Getting caught like that would not be a problem for the game. We would just set it up so that your hacker buddies or the organization that you work for could then bust you out of jail. They would set you up with a new gateway (probably an alpha) and you could restore your gateway data from offsite backup and continue the story line.
Getting disavowed isn't the end; Getting killed is the end.

[agentCDE]

Hey, this could be good.

Ok, my ideas...

Reputation score:
This is your standing with your inner circle of co-hackers

Government criminal rating:
This is how much the world governmets hate your guts.
Similar scores would apply for companies and criminal organization.

The higher your reputation, the more likely it is that your friends will bust you out of jail, set you up with a new gateway, set you up with a BETTER new gateway, or lend a hand in some other way.

The more an organization likes you, the more likely they will help you when you're in trouble. (Same as friends)

The more an organization hates you, the more likely they will try and hinder you in some way.

[TheDuke]

There is already a sort of reputation score in Uplink called the neuromancer rating and the grade ranking. The grade ranking indicates how skilled you are and how you rank compared to the other agents. The neuromancer rating is sort of a light side vs dark side rating. It ranges from Revoutionary (good) to Morally Bankrupt (bad).
 Right now these ratings just effect the types of missions you can take. The game could be modified to take different actions, actions like what agentCDE described, based on your agent ranking and neuromancer rating.

[LoganAlthor]

Along those same lines, couldn't you also have some way of getting your other (computer generated) Uplink agents out of jail, and in, er... PR points for it, or get paid by Uplink or the agents themselves for helping them out?

I haven't gotten the DevCD yet, but I will be ordering it this week, so i haven't seen the code, so this is totally hypothetical, but couldn't you also somehow, have a second gateway that you can build on the side when you have extra money, just in case you have to blow up the old one?   "Your gateway was destroyed when the motion sensor was tripped.  You must log out.  When you log back in you will be directed to Gateway2."

[hackerboy]

Along the lines of getting your friends out of jail, that could be run like the GCD, with a hack of clear history or something like years served met, or off on good behavior.  

Like, if he has 20 yrs to serve, and you type in that he's served 20 already, they would free him.

Another idea is that you could hack into the government and send a fake pardon from the governor or president, etc.

[Pyronius]

How about different levels of law enforcement agencies or maybe corporate security forces who try to seize your gateway? Depending on who is after you would depend on what measures you would take to protect yourself. I was thinking that this would be a good way to implement different security devices in your machine like a total system wipe program so instead of having to buy a new gateway you would only have to buy new programs or maybe ip switch so that you could use it to frame someone else so that whoever is after you thinks that someone else did all the stuff that you actually did(which might result in you losing you uplink rating or your neuromancer rating depending on who you frame for your crimes).
When I play one of the first things I do is to hack into the sample company internal services machine and delete thier file server so that I can use it to store backups of all those expensive programs. Does anyone else do this when they play?(I'm just curious). Is the Sample company actually a real company in the game (give missions, etc.) or are they just in the game as a "sample company"?

Just my 2 cents...for what it's worth.

[NeoTheOne175]

How about different levels of law enforcement agencies or maybe corporate security forces who try to seize your gateway?

Or even different levels of law enforcement who arrest hackers? Maybe not all of the arrested hackers will be immediately sent to a global prison system like the GCD (granted, the GCD itself is only the database, but i think you all know what i mean), but instead held in more localized prisons, and you could break into them and free an agent held there. Harder missions would have a sort of time limit, as the target agent may be held in a prison "pending transfer" to another, much-higher-security prison. In addition, higher-level prisons (say, federal prisons) would have much higher security than lower-security prisons (say, state prisons), and the agents in federal prisons would have much greater sentences (and so, much more difficulty in erasing their criminal records). There would be at least one "local prison" per continent/country, so perhaps an agent would be arrested in, say, Germany, and then you'd have to access a German prison (ideally located in a static location near Germany, anywhere else defeats the purpose ) to free him. Finally, the GCD's security would be greatly upgraded (even beyond what it already is), and missions to free an agent via the GCD would be by far the most difficult type of "free-an-agent" missions.

Just my two creds

[Avenger14]

These are great ideas, now it someone could just loan me 50 bucks to buy the dev cd.......

[Agent Zerro]

What if there were, say, some rival organisations for Uplink? They whould try to recruit agents as well, and try to take their share of the dirty work?

[Mattitude]

The FBI Mod actually allows you to bust other agents out of jail, and you DO get paid by uplink...

[shrapnel]

how about about many diferent hacking companies but when agents first make an uplink user they get to chose from a list that shows how many hackers in each company